Well, it was our first annual Black Friday Mayhem tournament. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the phrase, “Black Friday” is the label given to the Friday after Thanksgiving, where normally reasonably thinking individuals suspend their sanity for the better part of a day to pursue imaginary savings on retail products and services.
So after handling the massive line to get into Asgaard’s, we rolled for matchups and the first one particular was hotly anticipated:
Round 1: Biel Tan (getupandgo) vs. Krieg (Honda)
Round 2: Tau (getupandgo) vs. Space Marines (Honda)
The tournament organizers were careful to use the same vigorous standards for selecting opponents as international chess tournaments to ensure the necessary variety of opponents. We also spent a little time on the first round matchups to ensure that people who normally play against each other got to see some new faces.
3000 Point Army Lists:Biel Tan:
2 revenants
1 falcon troope w/ 1 firestorm
2 aspect warrior formations; 1 w/ exarch, 1 w/ autarch
2 guardian formations w/ 3 wraithguard and 3 wraithlords each
1 ranger formation
1 Cobra
1 vampire raider
Krieg:
1 Regimental HQ; Gorgon upgrade
3 Infantry Companies, 1 company with Fire Support upgrade
1 Stormsword company
1 Deathstrike Missile Silo
2 Warhounds
1 Quad launcher (4 guns) in trenches
Tau:
3 Orcas
2 Baracuda squadrons
2 crisis suit cadres, 1 w/ shas'o
1 firewarrior formation
1 skyray wing
2 hammerhead formations w/ skyrays
1 pathfinder formation
Space Marines:
1 Space Marine Landing Craft
1 Tactical Squad, 3 Razorbacks, 2 Rhinos, 1 Hunter
2 Terminators, 1 Supreme Commander
1 Strike Cruiser
1 Tactical, 2 Dreadnoughts
1 Tactical, 1 Librarian
1 Devastators, 1 Dread, 1 Captain
Game 1 (Biel Tan vs Krieg)Table 1 was covered with urban terrain aligned transversely with each table corner. We rolled for initiative and the Eldar won. I had placed the DS silo in front of my Blitz with in the expectation that I could use it to hold/contest that objective. Flanking it on the right were my newly painted Warhounds behind the Stormswords, an infantry company to its front, with other infantry companies garrisoned in a protective umbrella.
We both joked that each army had some serious issues with the other army and it was really going to depend on who was able minimize their weaknesses whilst capitalizing on their strengths. As the Krieg player, I knew that my chances of winning would be heavily dependent on how successful I would be at stripping activations from the Eldar.
The Eldar opened up with an alpha strike on the DS silo, using the Vampire and loaded up aspect warriors to engage. It was with typically grim Krieg satisfaction that the silo defenders saved all the hits, dealt two back and ended up winning the assault, destroying the Vampire, and all riders in the retreat. The Eldar were horrified as they new what was happening next. In an attempt to get some use out of a formation before it disappeared, the Cobra doubled up and whacked on an infantry co. holed up in some buildings.
However, eventually all good things come to an end and with a bit of trepidation, the Eldar reluctantly yielded the initiative. The crew in the Cobra never did see what hit them.
Thus began the long dance of death between the Krieg hammer and the Eldar Rapier. Next the Revenants doubled up and fired on the Krieg RHQ, taking out a Gorgon and an infantry stand. The Krieg riposte damaged a war host, but a failed activation on by another infantry company left the war host stunned but able to recover. The Stormswords barraged another host, but failed to break through the armor of Wraithlords and Wraithguard.
The Krieg continued to shift forces to the right to deal with the Eldar attempt to turn the right flank.
Most of the formations rallied as I recall.
Turn 2
The Eldar win initiative again. Not good. The Avatar decided to show up next to the Warhounds and carved one up completely, only taking a single wound for its efforts. The survivor withdrew to the far left near the DS silo. Retaining the initiative, the Revenants fire on the Stormswords leaving one remaining. Not wishing to miss out on carving up the turkey, the Falcon troupe lines up a few shots and takes out the last SHT. The Krieg are not happy. The rest of the turn consisted of the Krieg mounting limited infantry assaults, continuing to push into the table, whilst taking casualties. In this part of the “offensive” the Eldar Rangers were tracked down and reduced to one stand for sniping the Commissar stand. Although it didn’t feel like the Krieg were accomplishing much, they were slowly eroding the Eldar activation advantage.
Turn 3Guess who won the initiative? Go ahead and take a guess. Nope, it was the Eldar. Even at the start of the turn we began looking at objectives. However, the Eldar needed to continue to poke at the Krieg and so, with a swift move into my center, the Falcon troupe and the associated Fire Dragons and Dire Avengers engaged the DS silo and destroyed it. The Krieg retaliated with an infantry assault on the Falcons, wiping them out, whilst the Warhound sustained on the FD+DAs. The Quad launchers also shot and broke the formation, leaving two Fire Dragons. On the right, one Warhost stretched out securing the two Krieg objectives. On the other side of the table, Krieg infantry companies returned the favor, thus forcing a turn four.
Turn 4Oh, why be coy? The Eldar won the initiative. However, the problem facing them was not having enough formations to effectively counter the Krieg push up the board, especially with the whole warhost pinned in place holding two objectives. The Krieg problem is that although they retained a 2-3+ activation advantage, very little offensive firepower remained able to effectively engage the Eldar. The Krieg were forced to bear what punishment the Revenants handed out and grimly continue to take territory.
At the end of the game, the Eldar and Krieg were still tied 1-1. We rolled to see if there would be another turn. We did not match and totaled up points, with the Eldar pulling out the winning tie 2250 – 1700. The Krieg took some satisfaction (i.e. the moral victory) from taking the Eldar blitz objective with an infantry company.
Break: Tallying up the points, it looked like I had a good chance at second place and if I played my cards wisely, a decent shot at first. The challenge would be that I was playing Space Marines as a drop army, which is either win big or go home. Given that I’d be playing a pretty sharp Tau player and I knew that I had my work cut out.Game 2 (Tau vs. Space Marines)
This game seemed to run together a lot more than the first game, so I’ll just lay it out the best that I can.
After much deliberation, the Space Marines settled on the coordinates of the orbital bombardment and the drop locations. Realizing that I was going to struggle with the degree of mobility that the Tau possessed, I decided to focus on wiping out as many of the armored formations as possible and looking for some late game triples to allow me to contest a few objectives, plus with the Landing craft, perhaps pull a 2-0 win. Nothing big, just grab and hold on. I also realized that I had grabbed an old list and that there were others that might have been better. Oh well.
The Tau set up to the Space Marine right, near the Blitz, with one formation of Pathfinders near the center of the table. The OB came in and just managed to clip the Pathfinders, taking out one infantry and more importantly, one Devilfish. It was going to be extremely important that I reduce the Tau mobility as soon as possible.
I then activated my terminators and combined assaulted the large HH formation. (I blew my turn sequence on this, but getupandgo was gracious enough to allow me to continue). Unfortunately, I lost one terminator stand which opened up enough of a hole that the two surviving HHs were able to escape, which was pretty much the last time I saw his BTS.
The Tau then put a flight of Barracuda’s up on CAP. Which made me smile. I wasn’t as worried about them as I was the Skyrays. So one of the tacticals engaged the Skyray formation and wiped it out. The Ion cannon HHs then fired on my other drop tactical formation and beat them up pretty bad, leaving a dread. I then followed up with a ground assault with the Landing Craft and the mechanized tac squad, wiping out the Ion cannon HH formation. The Tau then tripled a FW formation over to my side of the board and grabbed two objectives. Seeing as I had pretty much done all that I could do, the Tau proceeded to move the Pathfinders over to my terminator squads and take one down. That bugged me. After that, a couple of failed activations on the Tau part closed down the turn. Pretty much all of the space marines blast markers were removed. The broken BTS for the Tau did not rally.
Turn 2Space Marines win initiative.
I decide to take out the Pathfinders and ground assault them with the Landing Craft. And win.
Unfortunately, the Tau respond with an Orca ground assault with Crisis and wipe out the Landing craft. There goes my mobility.
The Space Marines drive the mechanized tac formation into the mid board, but realize that I don’t have anything left that will allow me to catch up to the Tau and engage them on my terms…or any terms for that matter.
Turn 3The Space Marines win initiative.
By now, there’re only a few things I can do and most of those actions revolve around killing things. So my termies mosey over to where the Orca landed Crisis are, shooting them and they break.
The mech tac is assaulted by another Orca + Crisis formation and breaks. In retribution, they deal out enough hits that the Crisis also break. The Orca stays on the ground giving another tac formation something large to shoot at and they blow it up.
We fiddle around with some pointless maneuvering, but at the end of the turn the Tau are ahead 3-1. It should have been 3-2, but I was sloppy with my measuring and missed taking the Tau Blitz by a couple of centimeters.
Anyway, it was a tough game and looking back on it, I was going to have a pretty tough time with the Tau. Getupandgo played a very solid game and punished me every chance he could. It was a great game.
Results:Well, we totaled up the points for all the games and in spite of botching up the last game I was still able to get a lock on Second place, closely edged out for first by getupandgo, which was well deserved.
